


Nothing, or a Silhouette

by Leamas



Series: Nothing, or a Silhouette [1]
Category: The Alienist (TV)
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-09
Updated: 2018-06-09
Packaged: 2019-05-20 04:27:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14887634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leamas/pseuds/Leamas
Summary: After the reservoir, John brings Joseph home.





	Nothing, or a Silhouette

_It was easier in the summer, when the cold didn’t leave Bernadette struggling to find some warmth standing outside, or to find a room in one of the brothels for the night. Both options had their downsides, but she knew which she preferred. Now, though—now, it was warm. It was hard to believe it, standing in this pocket of sticky, night-time heat, but it would be worse inside, in a basement with stifled air or a room where she could crack open a window and only occasionally feel a breeze against her skin. A strand of hair from her wig clung to her face even after she pushed it away. As she looked around herself she found that she was having trouble breathing, the air too thick, her dress pinching her despite the weight that she’d lost over the past few months._

_Down the street, standing not too far away from her, was another girl called Lily. She was a few years older than Bernadette, and had been doing this longer. They weren’t close, but just seeing her there made Bernadette’s chest loosen, her breath come easier._

_It had been too long since she’d done this. The last time she’d found herself standing on the street like this had been in May, and now it was September. How had she wasted the whole summer? It didn’t matter—she didn’t want to think about that. It had happened to someone else. To many other people. Not to her._

_She had to get a grip. Bernadette leaned an arm back against the wall to hold most of her weight. Slowly she let her eyes drift away from Lily to a group of men passing by in the street, and caught eyes with one of them, blinking slowly and tiling her head down. What was she supposed to do with her hand, again? It was a weight hanging by her side, and she was so aware of the scars around her wrists, although they were faint now, barely visible to anyone except to her, still proof of how she’d struggled. The man who had caught her eyes looked away quickly, but as she watched his back retreat he spared another glance over his shoulder to her. Quick, but long enough to remember what she looked like. He’d be back later, alone, but she’d have a chance to run before then._

_Why did her chest feel so tight, the muscles in her arms poised? Where did she learn this itch in her legs urging her to run; when did she forget to clamp down on that, to smile? Bernadette looked back to where Lily had been standing, and almost called out for her as she saw Lily rest her hand on another man’s wrist, allowing herself to be guided away and leaving Bernadette alone there._

_A hand landed on the top of her arm, and she jumped, whipping her head around to see who it was and freezing, then jerking her arm out of John’s hand at the same time as he said, “Joseph,” in a voice that was unreadable to Bernadette, but that might not have been if she’d been able to think about it._

_He didn’t hold her arm, but raised his and taking a step back—but only a step._

_Joseph was going to ask, why are you here? But instead demanded, “How did you find me?”_

_“I thought you would be here,” John said. “This isn’t a new place.”_

_Joseph shook her head. “You shouldn’t be here.”_

_“Neither should you.”_

_“No,” he said. “No, you don’t understand.” His heart was beating too quickly. John was standing too close, and there were other people on the street—people that Joseph knew, who knew him. Who’d expected things from him. He tried to straighten his shoulders and to smile over John’s shoulder, to find someplace to look that was anywhere but at John, but he couldn’t focus. Chest too tight, legs too weak. He was at a loss for words, felt warm like he might if he was blushing, his skin prickling. He dreaded to think how he looked, like a mess. Like himself._

_“Okay,” John said, slowly, but just the sound of his voice was enough to make Joseph tense. “Why don’t you tell me.”_

_Joseph couldn’t say anything else, and neither could Bernadette. But she could give John a weak smile, one that twisted across Joseph’s face like a starving, feral cat, before she turned on her heel and ran. Joseph had made it easy to come after her, but if Bernadette kept running then John wouldn’t._

* * *

The first time that Joseph woke he thought that he was still asleep, that he was dreaming, or that he’d died, because he didn’t recognise where he was, not the look of it or the smell of it or any of the sounds, and everything was white and looked clean, even the peeling walls and the chipped window. He looked at the wall next to his bed—his bed?—and to the women in uniform—nurses—that passed in front of his door, not seeing him or that he was awake, and then closed his eyes and listened. He didn’t move, or think that he could. It would be better if no one knew that he was awake.

 

When he woke again he was noticed by a nurse, who approached him and helped him to sit up. She pressed a glass of water into his hands and held it to his mouth while he drank, then pulled it away and set it on the table next to the bed.

“You can have more in a minute, but you don’t want to make yourself sick.”

Joseph leaned forward, covering his eyes with his fingers. “Where am I?”

She told him the name of the hospital. When he met her with a blank face she smiled slightly, tilting her head forward to ask, “Is that not familiar?”

“How did I get here?”

“Your father brought you here two nights ago,” she said. “Early in the morning, really. Do you remember that?”

“My father.”

“Yes,” the nurse said. “He was here early yesterday, although he couldn’t stay as long as he wanted. He was here again earlier today—he asked us to call, if you woke up.”

Joseph felt his stomach plummet. He was sitting on the bed, but he was also a bottomless pit that he kept falling through. “That isn’t possible.”

The only family he could think of didn’t know where he was. Not unless the police worked out who he was and passed that information along. But they hadn’t wanted him around the house, and had been quick enough to kick him out when they found where he’d been spending his time on the streets, away from them. As sure as he knew this, though, thinking about it still sent a stab through him, as sharply felt as what he could imagine his uncle asking, what he’d expected, making a life for him like that, and who could he really blame for this?—but maybe he was wrong.

Joseph was so tired.

As if the nurse knew what he was thinking, she put a hand on his shoulder and pushed him back down onto the bed. “Rest.”

As she left him, Joseph knew that he should leave. Moving seemed impossible, though, like when he’d been underground, and thought that he should try to get away, or try harder. He hadn’t then because he’d known what would happen, and now he felt equally resigned for what was coming. But being resigned wasn’t the same as being ready.

When he saw John Moore in the hallway he sat up, propping himself up on one arm. There weren’t any chairs in the room, but that didn’t seem to bother John. He came closer to Joseph’s bedside.

“What are you doing here?” Joseph asked.

“Good morning to you, too,” John said, with a smile. He looked tired, too, and like there was something fresh about his expression that made his whole face look new. Changed, like the layers were pulled back. “Although I suppose it’s afternoon now. Closer to evening, actually.”

“How did you find me?”

“That’s longer than I think that I can tell you here.”

“How did you know that I was here?”

John looked at him strangely. “Do you remember anything about the other night?”

“No,” Joseph said quickly, but that wasn’t right.

“Right,” John was telling him. “Wait here. I’m going to find a chair. Then I’ll bring you up to scratch.”

“I don’t know where you think I’ll go,” Joseph called after John as he turned away from the bed. He tried frantically to think back to what had happened, peeling away all the details to try to piece together how he had come to be here. The memory of John felt heavy, like a weight he turned over in his hands that he couldn’t place. John turning him over, and holding him, and how different that felt to—and saying that he was safe, with an arm around Joseph’s shoulder, carrying him—

And then he was outside, in the cool night air, held tightly to John’s chest, head tucked against his shoulder in the hopes that it would be enough to stop anyone from noticing or stopping them. Joseph hadn’t had a single guess what he’d see if he opened his eyes, but he felt no desire to. He was outside again, and he knew that this was over. He was happy to leave it at that, aware of nothing except the feeling of being carried, the sound of John’s footsteps on the bricks, and the rise and fall of John’s breathing. He hadn’t thought about where he’d been taken—only about what would happen to him now that he was there—and he hadn’t considered what would happen to him after. It had seemed at least as unlikely as the possibility that he’d see John again.

And he’d thought of Mr Moore often. Laying on his side in those tunnels, his wrists and ankles bound, the smell of stale, dirty air, the rope chafing against his wrists as he tried to free them despite the futility, the sound of a cat’s meow even after it was dead and Joseph had been forced to eat it, being turned onto his back, the taste of rancid breath in his face—one of the things that Joseph could think of that wasn’t happening to him was John, and how sorry he was. Sorry that he’d lost the money John had given him, to try to help him, and sorry that he went back for it. He felt so stupid lying there; given a fair warning, but still in the tunnels with rope around his wrists.

He felt just as stupid now, when John came back, dragging a chair that he dropped next to Joseph’s bed.

“I said that you were my son, so no one here would have questions. Personally, I think they still did,” John said, with a wry grin. “But I still think there’s some resemblance, if you’re looking for it. Maybe not the hair, but—well, maybe you more take after your mother.”

“Maybe,” Joseph said. To test the waters he added, “Maybe you’re a cousin, or something. An uncle, or…”

“If you say grandfather,” John said, “then we’ll be having to have words.”

Joseph sat up in bed, leaned against the pillow. He looked to the pitcher of water at his bedside, and John, seeming to get the message, poured him a glass.

“They say you’re all right,” John said. “Apparently your wrists are your most pressing injury. You have some bruises, but nothing that won’t heal on its own. They say that so long as I’m gentle with you, and let you rest, then you’ll make a full recovery.”

Joseph glanced down at his wrists: bandaged, crisp and white. He turned one of his hands over, to look at it and so that he didn’t have to look back at John. It was hard to tell what he was hearing in his voice, but there was something tight. It sounded like he was cutting himself off. Like what John was saying to him wasn’t everything.

And Joseph wondered what other injuries he had, what the nurses made of everything else; and he suddenly thought about John seeing everything else, or knowing

“I’ll be fine,” Joseph said. “It doesn’t even hurt that much.”

“Good,” John said. “Tomorrow you’ll come home with me. You can rest there.”

“Why?”

“I don’t think that you’d be getting much rest on the street,” John said. “And I told you before—I don’t want you living like that anymore. It can’t be hard to imagine why, after what happened.”

 

The morning after John had finished delivering Joseph to the hospital he’d returned home, exhausted and all too aware that if he didn’t sleep now then it would be a long time before he had the chance. If he was really lucky, then more people would be wanting to talk to Laszlo than to him, and it might be a few days before his name came up at all. John Moore was not a lucky man, though, and even if the authorities were preoccupied with everything else that had happened in such a short period of time, he had an appointment to make that afternoon. Back to the hospital; and to Laszlo. John was already exhausted, or still exhausted. There was no difference.

He hadn’t realised how late it was until he let himself into his grandmother’s house and found that she was awake, sitting at the table.

“John?” she called. “Is that you?” She didn’t wait for him to answer before coming to see him.

“Who else would it be at this time?” he’d said with a laugh; how many times had he said that? Standing in front of her he felt young, like a child expecting to be scolded; and old, suddenly wanting nothing more than to look after her; and either way, wanting to ask her forgiveness.

Are you okay?”

“Grandmother.” His jacket was off, hanging over his arm, and he took her hand in his. “There’s something that I have to tell you.”

But he found that there was a lot that he couldn’t tell her—where he’d been, and what he’d done for the past several months. I’ve been helping a friend conduct an investigation—you remember Dr Kreizler, right? Laszlo? He asked me to go with him to the opera only a few days ago, and nothing about Joseph, although Joseph was at the forefront of his thoughts.

Joseph, small in his arms but warm, and breathing; and every so often he’d stir, or whimper, or push at John’s arms before settling against him again with a sigh; not a sigh of relief but a tired sigh, an exhausted one. And although he thought of Joseph again, and again, with the thought that he was alive still following, John found that he was too tired to even feel relief, although he also thought that he would never sleep again, and that if he went to his room now he’d find himself awake, staring at the ceiling, the prospect of having a drink to mute the evening all the more appealing.

“During this investigation that I was helping with I met a child. His name is Joseph. He’s in the hospital now, but once he’s awake—after he’s been seen to, that is—then I’m going to bring him back here.”

He waited for her answer to that, unsure what to expect. “You’re tired, John. Maybe you should sleep.”

“I will,” he promised, suddenly remembering that this was the woman who had taken him in after he became estranged from his father and finding a new, renewed strength with which to approach the subject. “I can’t leave him out there.”

She continued to look at him, and gently cupped his face in her hand. “You look dreadful. You really have to sleep, and then we’ll talk.”

 

A lot had been talked about between himself and Laszlo earlier that day, after he’d been to the hospital to see Joseph, and in some ways it was reminiscent of a lot of the meetings they’d had at Laszlo’s house, in his office, over the past several months. Everything felt like it was moving far too slowly, after months and months of anticipating another dead child; worrying about the boys he’d come to recognise. Then there was the long period of after, where everything felt too still and John didn’t feel like he could make heads or tails of how to move like that again. All urgency was gone, though, and at least for John, it felt like something that he’d often carried close to him had departed with it. He was not the same man now as the one Laszlo approached all those nights ago in January.

Before he left, Laszlo stopped him. “A word, John?”

“What?” John asked. “It can’t wait until morning, can it?”

“I don’t see why we ought to wait,” Laszlo said. “It won’t take long. It is just a word.”

“Okay,” John said, stepping away from the door and allowing it to close; looking at Laszlo, waiting to hear what his friend would say.

“Joseph,” Laszlo said. “Do you know what’s become of him?”

“He’s in the hospital,” John said. “He has been since I left him there—there’s remarkably little that’s wrong with him, but…” But he’d been paying to keep Joseph there while he recovered.

“Have you considered bringing him here?”

“You’re asking me, like I’m his father,” John said, a tight grin on his face, as he thought back to what he’d said at the hospital when he brought Joseph to them, this is my son, he’s been hurt—and how natural that sounded, none of the worry artificial or the intense need to protect him.

“What?” Laszlo asked, noticing that expression.

“Nothing,” John said. “Go on.”

“I mean,” Laszlo said, “we could look after him in the institution. He’d be in good hands, and after what he’s been through…”

“If that’s what you wanted to suggest, I’d have assumed you’d talk to someone else. The hospital, for instance; the police. Or Joseph himself,” John said. “You’ve always done what you could to address it with them.” And John wasn’t Joseph’s guardian; he was only paying for him to be looked after.

“Yes,” Laszlo agreed. “I suppose there’s something else that I wanted to discuss.”

“And that is?”

“You’re going to take him,” Laszlo said. “You’ve decided that since you carried him out of the reservoir.”

John considered this before speaking, and when he did reply, he spoke very slowly. “And you think that would be good for him.”

“I think,” Laszlo said, “that he trusts you more than he would me, and that in an environment like this he’d be more a captive here than if he were in your home.”

“And you know this?” John asked, looking to Laszlo for a degree of certainty and the faith that Laszlo had in him to make the decision that John knew he would have to make, for necessity. For what he’d known he would do from the moment that he first blamed himself for what happened to Joseph, after he disappeared.

 

It was only a few days later that he brought Joseph home from the hospital, and then the stagnation vanished and a lot happened all at once: his grandmother had her first impression of Joseph; Joseph had his first impression of John’s grandmother, along with his first impression he had of where John lived, and how he lived; and it really struck John that he was bringing Joseph back to live with him, and to stay with him. As he opened the front door, he paused, making like he was having difficulty with the door before finally turning the key and forcing the door open, and himself through after it.

“Anything that you like about this house,” John said, “you have my grandmother to thank for that. She’s home, if you give her a moment…”

She looked sceptical when she saw Joseph. If he’d waited any longer to bring it up to her, though, John knew that it would just be more time for her to have questions that he didn’t think he was ready to answer, and that he didn’t think Joseph was ready to answer, either. Like where did you find him, again? and how has it fallen to you to look after him?—but not meant unkindly. Still, he didn’t think her scrutinising gaze would pass Joseph unnoticed; he was fixing her with one of his own.

“I heard that you were coming,” she said. “Joseph.” Testing the name in her mouth, seeing how it measured up against him.

“That’s me.” Joseph glanced to John, but other than quick glance he didn’t look away from Mrs Moore. “Thanks for having me.”

“There’s hardly any need to thank me. I’ve had one of the guest rooms prepared for you—John will show you. It isn’t hard to find, just up the stairs, but I’m sure you’d prefer to be shown then. Then, if you want to wash up, we can have lunch… Does he have anything else?” That question, for John.

“Nothing else,” John said. “Do you?”

“No,” Joseph confirmed. “Not with me.”

“Will you be bringing anything else back?”

There was a pause, a moment of silence, and then John answered. “No.” He turned to Joseph. “I’ll bring you to that room. Show you where you’ll be staying.”

After he’d brought Joseph to the guest room—which had been prepared, quite nicely—he returned downstairs to find his grandmother sitting at the table, a newspaper in hand. She glanced up when she saw him. He thought that she wouldn’t say anything, and maybe she intended not to; hoping for the inquisitive look to be enough; but she couldn’t resist. “Where did you find him?”

“I don’t think that I should tell you that,” John said. “It was through Dr Kreizler. If you’re worried about him.”

“I’m not worried about him,” Mrs Moore said.

“You took me in, after what happen between myself and my father. I didn’t think you’d have a problem.”

“With another one?” Her face softened. “How long will he be staying here?”

“I don’t know,” John said. “I’m going to work something out for him. I said I’d take him in myself, if I have to. If it’s too much trouble for you, I’ll work out somewhere else that I can go.”

“Sit down, John,” she said, gesturing. “I’m sure that the boy will be down here in a moment. There’s no reason for you to start talking like that.”

* * *

Mornings in the Moore house were usually a quiet affair, first giving Joseph the sounds from the street for company and then the sounds of Mrs Moore’s household, who were not a loud presence but a notable one. Joseph didn’t remember a time when he regularly woke up so early, his days usually starting closer to midday, or early in the afternoon, especially in the summer when the heat would stir him first, but after a week a new rhythm took hold. It was June. He was awake when the sky was just getting light, when the air was still cool.

He heard John leave one morning. Not long after Mrs Moore did the same. The house did not fall silent; the day was only just beginning, and an energy from outside felt like it was bleeding into it, warming it. But there was no one in the house who looked like they might be overly concerned by what Joseph was doing.

He climbed out of the bed, pressing his ear against the door to hear if there was anyone passing in the hallway—no one—before opening the door and stepping outside. Nothing but light from the windows, glinting off the glass frames and ornaments scattered about the house, long, lazy shadows that looked cool and comfortable.

John had pointed out what room was his. Apart from sleeping, he actually spent very little time there. Joseph wasn’t sure what to expect when he pushed the door open but found that it didn’t surprise him to see that it looked less ornate than the rest of the house. Had John decorated it? Had he lived here as a child? Was Joseph standing in John’s childhood room that grew up with him, or had this room been prepared for him the same way that Joseph’s had been set out for him?

Joseph let himself in slowly, not wanting to touch anything. The walls, compared to the rest of the house, looked scarce, but he saw framed pictures scattered about; saw John’s art supplies that looked left on a desk, along with the diary that Joseph had seen John sketch in. He thought about just leaving it at that—he had only wanted to look at the room itself—but seeing it left there, in plain view, was too tempting. Joseph crossed the room as carefully as he might if John were asleep in the bed.

Most of the drawings that Joseph saw in this notebook looked incomplete, something started before being abandoned. On a few pages, it looked like John had scribbled out what he’d been drawing, sometimes to the point where it was unrecognisable; some pages had multiple sketches; others only one. As he turned through the pages, more and more pages were incomplete, scratched out, drawn over, the lines themselves swapping either pressed too hard into the paper or turning wobbly. Sometimes, though, Joseph found a picture that looked finished, that John had signed off on in the corner; something pretty mixed in with all of these other pictures. The dates that appeared on this picture were from several years ago. Mostly, it looked like John was just drawing things that he might have seen outside. And there was a woman that appeared many times; the resemblance between pictures was unmistakable, even when John’s lines were loose or aggressive; even as time went on, as more and more of the details were left out until she looked like more of an outline than anything else.

He hadn’t realised how long he’d been standing there, but some sound from downstairs caught his attention. It was only someone moving from one room to another, but Joseph practically threw the diary back onto the desk, only just remembering to leave it exactly how he’d found it before quickly fleeing from the room, back to the room that was now his. No one seemed to notice; the moment seemed almost irrelevant as soon as he left the room.

 

Mrs Moore kept watch over the house for the first week while Joseph rested, when John couldn’t be there. She would invite Joseph to sit with her during meals, tense incidents, Joseph unsure how to answer her questions, unsure about how to eat with those extra spoons and forks. What did old ladies want to hear? They were two strangers with virtually nothing in common, except for one hinge that brought them together: her grandson.

“He hasn’t told me too much about you,” Mrs Moore said, “but it isn’t too hard to see what he thinks of you.”

“Isn’t it?” Joseph asked, wondering what about how he was sitting and eating told her anything about what her grandson thought of him.

“No,” she said. “You look like the sort of boy that John might have befriended at your age. He was always off, with his sketchbooks and friends. He was easy to get along with, if you were the right person. If you could have known him then…” she trailed off, paused.

“What was he like before?”

“It’s difficult to say,” she said, perhaps with a touch of sadness. “I didn’t see him nearly as often as I might have liked—but he was never serious. Not then, not really.”

John was confident, and with the kind of ease that men like him just seemed born to; although John was nice, and polite, and seemed sincere. There wasn’t too much of a difference between how John acted now that he was in his own home, with his grandmother, or professional colleagues, than in how Joseph remembered his first impression of John, and that surprised him. Joseph had assumed that some of the distance that emanated from John was the same distant that a lot of people who came from more respectable families had, a look that told Joseph that he was being regarded and studied by someone who had taken to the streets in the hopes of finding something like Bernadette, to stare at or pity or anything else. But John had that slight distance with everyone, even his friends.

“You’re smaller than he was at your age,” Mrs Moore was going on, “but it has had me thinking, now that I’m looking at you…”

Joseph waited.

“I think I still have some things from when John was younger, old clothes and the like. It might just fit you, with a bit of work.”

Not only did she still believe that she had John’s old things, but she had a rather precise idea where they were, and within the hour, after their meal was finished, she’d had one of her house staff go to fetch them. Joseph waited uncomfortably at the table, where Mrs Moore sat properly, gracefully, taking constant inventory of the room, and of Joseph, who was now something else for her to look after. There was only a slight change in her expression when the woman sent to return with that clothes appeared in the doorway.

The shirt was elegant, but creased, and the black pants were dusty. Mrs Moore stood to examine them, touching the fabric and folding it between her fingers, holding up the shirt and then looking to Joseph, taking measurement of him. “I haven’t seen this in years,” she said, and Joseph wondered if that was true. “Try it on. See if it fits you. If it does, you can wear it.”

“Do you think…”

“Do I think…?”

“What will your grandson think?”

“John,” she said, like the name might summon him. “He’ll be home in a few hours. We can see then. If these don’t fit you, then we’ll have to find something else. We’ll have to, anyway. He means well, but he hasn’t even considered how to dress you.”

As Joseph held this clothes in his hand, he’d found it remarkably easy to imagine a younger John wearing them; and going from there he’d found it easy to imagine what John might have looked like when he was twelve, with younger features and younger eyes, his expression less turned into himself. John had been taller than him by a few inches, his shoulders just a little bit broader; there had been more of him to fill out the shirt, and the trousers, which fell around his ankle and gathered over his feet.

So when he finally turned to face the mirror and looked at himself, he only saw how much like himself he looked. He tried to straighten his back, though, to meet his reflection with a most serious gaze, and then to smile. Not nearly as friendly, or as generous, as John was.

If Mrs Moore was making comparisons between her grandson and Joseph, it was more to do with if the clothes fit than if Joseph should be wearing them, or if he just looked like a sloppy replica of her grandson. She held out his arm touched the side, where the shirt fell loosely.

“Nothing that can’t be adjusted,” she said. “It fits better than I thought it would.”

 

John wasn’t usually fond of his grandmother’s sentimentality, her tendency to use physical objects to hold onto the past. He felt it made the house feel cluttered; everything, in some way, a personal reminder of something else, to another time. This time, though, he found himself feeling more grateful. He’d always suspected that his grandmother might have kept more items from his childhood than just what he knew about, but until he came down one morning and saw Joseph sitting at the dining room table, he hadn’t considered that she might have kept his old clothes as well.

“Well? What do you think?” Joseph asked.

John considered him for a moment, before smiling. “They suit him.”

Joseph beamed, and in the look that John saw on his face he was certain he’d found the answer to if this was the right thing to do. He hadn’t had any doubts, not really, but he had considered whether it was even possible—doubts that he hadn’t been acknowledging until now, whether he could be any good to Joseph or just the preferable alternative to living on the street.

 

The lighting wasn’t ideal in the shade of the house, but natural lighting was always easier to work with than sitting inside, under some artificial lamp that cast strange shadows across the room. John found Joseph to made a pretty decent model; he’d told the boy that he didn’t have to worry too much about sitting still, knowing how difficult it could be to draw children sometimes: either they turned restless, quickly, fidgeting and straining against whatever pose they were set to hold; or they sat rigidly still, determined not to move an inch even to breathe. He’d pegged Joseph for the latter, but was wrong. After he’d gotten himself comfortable on the grass, Joseph was content to laze around while John worked, on occasion watching his grandmother and her friends sitting at the table nearer to the house.

The house belonged to someone in her family, a nephew or someone—no one who John knew overly well, who in turn did not know too much about him. He’d been invited along for this weekend gathering, something to celebrate his daughter’s engagement. Mrs Moore hadn’t spared the opportunity to remind him that she hoped to do something similar one day; but they’d made it easily, and Joseph had been invited. How her nephew knew of Joseph, or what he’d been told about how John knew Joseph, remained unclear.

He’d stuck close while Mrs Moore showed her grandson off, and when she finished and John found himself between conversations, making small talk and catching people up about what he’d been doing, he found himself grateful to have Joseph there to ask, “Do you really know all these people?”

“Not particularly well,” John admitted, “although I think I’ve seen almost everyone at one time or another.”

Joseph was taking stock of the room, looking out of place like a piece of clothing, sloppily discarded and forgotten, now out of place. The suit he wore, one of John’s old ones, looked like it didn’t fit right, even though it had been tailored. He looked as uncomfortable here as Stevie had that night they’d dressed him up as a girl all those weeks ago—a situation by default and because of its necessity had been exceedingly unpleasant, but was also so ridiculous that John couldn’t help but find the humour in it. With the exception of Stevie, they all had—at least, until the evening got completely out of hands, when it became yet another aspect of the case that made John feel ill to think about.

“So who’s she?” Joseph asked. “How do you know her?”

John had followed Joseph’s gaze across the room and froze.

“Why do you assume I know her?”

“She keeps looking this way,” Joseph said, with a shrug. “Not all the time, but every so often, when she thinks no one’s looking.”

“You aren’t staring at her, are you?”

“No,” Joseph said, affronted. “I just noticed her. Don’t think she’s even realised it.”

A woman standing there, just where Joseph said. John could only see the side of her face, like a silhouette. She was speaking to someone else—someone that John didn’t recognise, who he supposed she’d met sometime after they’d stopped speaking. They no longer ran in the same circles, he and Julia.

And so now, when he found himself sitting by himself, he was especially thankful to have Joseph there. Whether Joseph made a suitable enough excuse to take his leave or not, John didn’t know; there were introductions made, questions, curious looks from time to time when Joseph spoke, or answered any questions. He wasn’t delicate when he ate, sitting hunched over his food like he expected someone to take it, and John knew that this was noticed, like how he’d been noticed, making an appearance for the first time here. Dear god, what didn’t go noticed around here? And he was just as bad for it, being constantly aware of Joseph, not wanting to look away from him.

So after lunch, he’d offered to find someplace quiet to sit, and he’d draw Joseph. He’d accepted without any fuss, and for a while they didn’t say anything. When Joseph shifted on the grass, John asked, “So what do you think?” John asked. “Are you bored sitting around out here?”

Joseph turned his head to look at John and shrugged. “I don’t know what you want me to do.”

“Nothing,” John said. “Relax. We’re just here as guests.”

“Guests.”

“It really isn’t anything more complicated than that,” John promised. “Sooner or later someone always remembers that I’m an illustrator and wants me to draw them. And how can I refuse? You just happen to be the first.” He was working at Joseph’s hair and taking his time with it—fanning out around Joseph’s head, threatening to curl if he let them grow any longer.

Joseph was looking over to some of the other guests, not too far from there. Without looking up John knew that Julia was among them, and so when Joseph said, “That woman from inside is standing nearby,” it didn’t surprise him, although he tensed slightly and let out a slow sigh. He could stand to have a drink, although he didn’t think that he actually wanted that. He didn’t know what to want instead.

“Is she still watching me?” John asked.

“No. I don’t think so,” Joseph said.

“Then I don’t see any reason to pay her too much attention. Here. What do you think of this?” He turned his drawing pad around to show Joseph, who looked down at the page and then back to John. “Go on. Take it. What do you think?”

Hesitantly Joseph drew the paper nearer, studying it carefully. His fingers hovered over John’s careful lines, following them without touching the page. At first he simply looked mesmerised by what he was seeing, a real depiction of him.

“Well?” John asked.

“It looks just like me.”

“I should hope so,” John said. “I hope I wasn’t too unflattering.”

“You weren’t,” Joseph said. His face was twisted, like he was struggling to find the words that he wanted to use. John’s stomach sank. He didn’t know what he’d done, but something about this situation was wrong. It was on Joseph’s face, like he’d touched an open wound; and in John’s life, he was unfamiliar with finding himself in the position of not being that raw nerve. “That’s me.”

“Do you want to keep it?” John asked.

“If you’re giving it to me.”

“It’s yours.”

“Then yeah. Sure, I want it.” He didn’t seem to be making a move to take it, and so John offered to keep it for him until they got back to the city. It would be safer like this, he reasoned, and Joseph agreed. He handed the paper back to John.

John looked back down to the paper. It was Joseph’s likeness. His hair, and how light his eyes were; how young he looked. Younger than when John first saw him, all the youth scrubbed off him, turning him grotesquely old and lanky and highlighting the body of a child.

When John remembered first meeting him on that roof—and their subsequent meetings—he’d seemed, if not at ease, then at least at home. As much as it unsettled him that Joseph should call the streets his home, seeing him here, now, it was undeniable that he was out of place.

 

Although it had been less than a month, Joseph found the streets to be both new, and that they were completely normal, welcoming him back without knowing it. But of course it would—before this last month he hadn’t really had any reason to leave these few blocks for the last three years.

It didn’t take long for him to find where some of the girls he’d worked with were staying, in the back of a small building, that Joseph had seen used for many things over the years but mostly it had been nothing—except for people like them, who found plenty of room for it. He showed himself in, and after an initial, hesitant pause he approached the others. He hadn’t thought that they might give him a moment’s pause; and certainly he hadn’t expected to be crowded.

“Where were you?” one boy said, named Leon, when he wasn’t Lily; “You’ve been gone for long enough, we thought you’d be lucky if you were coming back.”

“We thought you weren’t coming back,” someone else piped up.

“Thought you were dead.”

Joseph paused at that, but then shrugged. “They’re keeping me for a while,” he said, unsure what he should say and how much he should keep to himself. “They’ve got questions, and stuff.”

“Questions?” Leon, suddenly suspicious.

“Just about what happened.”

“They didn’t have a problem coming to find you here when they wanted something before,” someone said, almost indigently. Joseph waved them off, let himself into the room. It was one a place he’d never been in, but it felt more familiar than the Moore house, with bare walls and thin curtains, and a floor that felt familiar under his feet.

“I don’t know why they’re doing it this way,” he said, with a shrug. “Sorry I didn’t come back sooner.”

He’d thought about slipping away, like he had today, but hadn’t wanted to draw attention to himself or to seem ungrateful. There was a lot of time, at home, that Joseph thought he could just sit aimlessly. A tiredness would creep up on him, and everything ached; it was tempting just to stay in bed until someone—John, or his grandmother—came to check on him and ask what he was doing, and then to occupy himself with something. It had only been a few weeks since John got him out of the hospital; Joseph didn’t think he should feel bored or discontent, but he did.

He missed his friends, but that wasn’t it. He felt homesick, like he did for a while after his parents died, and especially after his uncle kicked him out onto the street, telling him that if he wanted to act like a whore than he could, but not under his roof. On his own time. There wasn’t a lot about living like this that Joseph found pleasant, or that he liked, but there were the other girls who were going through the same thing. He’d taken it for granted that his parents would look out for him while they were alive; never aware of how important it was to have someone else who was in the same position as him until he found himself on his own, without any idea about how not to starve, or freeze to death, or get hurt, or let people hurt him, and when he was just finding his footing. There was only so much that could be learned through trial and error before he ended up dead somewhere, or hurt too badly to live. They had each other’s back.

Joseph reached into his pocket, pulling out some of the money that John had given him. “Anyway, I don’t have much need for this right now.”

With that out of the way, Joseph found a place sitting on a mattress against the wall, where they all seemed to be sitting for now.

“So what did happen to you?” Leon asked. For some reason Joseph hadn’t thought that he’d be asked about his disappearance. Maybe because it was a kind of unspoken agreement that with the really bad stuff, they didn’t tend to say anything: no more than a look of understanding, a kind word, whatever practical help someone could give. It was better not to know the fate that could have been his.

But from the worst stuff, girls didn’t tend to come back from it to be asked. So maybe it was different.

“Well,” Joseph said. “That’s a good question. I don’t really know.”

“You have to know,” someone said, at the same time as someone asked, “Did you forget?”

“I didn’t forget,” Joseph snapped. “I don’t know what you want to hear.”

 

Laszlo’s study looked odd now, with every surface looking too clean and the extensive notes that they had all rigorously updated for the past four months now put away—presumably for further review and reference, if John knew anything at all about Laszlo. He smiled roughly to himself at the thought, but still couldn’t help but feel like he should be able to look over his shoulder and see the boards, neatly inscribed with both Laszlo and Sara’s writings, not to mention the twin’s additions.

He supposed that he was the only person feeling this way, though; Laszlo seemed as unbothered as ever, and Stevie would have had plenty of time to get used to it.

“I asked him where he went,” John said. “He just gave me a few vague answers. I didn’t want to push it too far—I didn’t think that it would help.”

“Did you ask him, or accuse him?”

“I asked him,” John said. “I just told you—”

“It’s more than possible to do just that,” Laszlo said. “If you’re working for a long-term goal of gaining his trust—”

“And how do you propose doing that?” John asked, his words harsher than he intended. The tone wasn’t lost on Laszlo, but what was? It frustrated John, to have his own inadequacy pointed out. He was more than aware of his own flaws and failures, and frankly disgusted at himself. It was like he had said to Sara, while Joseph had been missing. Presumed dead. That he’d had the opportunity to help him, to take him in, and instead left him. With some money, but like that would solve anything! Who was he?

Who was he, expecting Joseph to trust him in any capacity after that, or even asking for it? He might have helped Joseph later, but even that situation was only a consequence of his own mistake.

“He wants what any child wants, John,” Laszlo said, perhaps entirely unaware of the conversation John was having with himself; John doubted that. “Safety, security. Someone reliable, who he can trust.”

“I don’t think his ideas about safety, and security, will be the same as mine,” John said. “You said yourself—these boys trusted our killer, because they had some connection. How could I convince someone like him to trust me?”

“I don’t think that I could answer that without knowing him,” Laszlo said. “But I think the fact that you consider this is a promising step.”

Despite himself, a smile crept to his face. If he didn’t know Laszlo better than that, he might have sworn that he had done the same—but he was certain he saw Laszlo’s features soften, a sort of warmth creep across his face and settle there as he looked at John. Almost like affection.

* * *

Most of the summer passed uneventfully, although a few things stood out to John. The first came following the weekend that they’d spent with that distant cousin, when John found Joseph in his grandmother’s bedroom, studying himself in the mirror.

“Is something wrong with your own mirror?” John asked. Joseph jumped, whipping around to stare at John with wide eyes before adopting a more guarded expression.

He’d taken some of her make-up and put it on, darkening his cheeks and the skin around his eyes. A discrete glance towards her vanity table revealed that he’d left everything exactly as it had been before. If John hadn’t come up looking for something, then neither of them would have known.

“What are you doing?” John asked.

“It’s nothing,” Joseph said. “Just forget about it.”

“Forget about it?” John repeated. “You shouldn’t be in here, much less…” He thought about it. What was Joseph doing? “Touching her stuff. Putting on her make-up.”

Joseph looked away, and John regretted the comment. But what was he to say now? This wasn’t a situation that he’d expected to find himself in. And he thought about how intently Joseph had studied himself in the mirror, the focus unsettling him.

“Hey. You don’t have to do this anymore,” he said, more gently now, but Joseph only stiffened his shoulders.

“Come on,” John said. “Take that off, will you? We should probably get out of here. I don’t think that my grandmother would appreciate you going through her room.”

“Fine,” Joseph said; and that was when John realised that there was a sudden tension that had shot through his body. Not the shock at having been caught, or even the sense of being cornered, but folding himself inward, retreating to somewhere that John couldn’t see. A raw nerve.

Joseph left, pushing past John and walking quickly down the hall before he had the chance to say anything else.

 

The other thing bothering John was Joseph’s tendency to disappear. He said that he was out walking, wandering around, although he preferred to not have company when he went out. Every time that John asked, Joseph would spend a few days around the house before it would start again. It hadn’t taken John long to suspect where he was going, and a quick favour from Stevie confirmed this.

It worried John; how long would it take for the need of familiarity to wear off?

“I think that you forget,” Sara said, “that it isn’t just familiarity that he’s looking after, but a sense of safety.”

“And he thinks that he’ll find it there,” John said, slowly, but he remembered what Joseph had told him, a long time ago, near when they first met each other. That it was better working in one of the brothels than on the street, because at least there he’d be protected from some of the worst people. The people who wanted something rough, he thought.

“Yes,” Sara said. They hadn’t seen each other for a while now; John had grown used to her company, and was starting to find it strange that they weren’t brushing shoulders quite as often as they had for a while. Not only had he grown used to it, he’d come to welcome it.

“There isn’t anything safe for him out there,” John said.

“But where else would he look?” Sara asked.

“So maybe it is familiarity.”

“Maybe,” she said, “the two just go hand-in-hand. Especially for someone so young.”

 

“You look put out,” Lily said, leaning against the wall next to Joseph. Sitting on the ground next to her, he felt weirdly small, dirty and out of place; in the way. She wore her hair long even as Leon, black hair touching her chin, so as Lily she didn’t need to bother with a wig. Still, Lily looked so different now, her scrawny arms now slender instead of weak and her face relaxed, her makeup applied evenly over the bruise Joseph noted on her jaw earlier.

“I’m fine,” Joseph said, pushing himself up and crossing his arms to face her. “I was just thinking that I should start getting back.”

“What?” Lily asked. But it’s early. Stay.”

“Maybe,” Joseph said, sounding a little uncertain even to himself. “It’s a long walk.”

The sun starting to set. By the time Joseph returned to Mrs Moore’s house it would be dark, and John would likely be home. He’d already asked a few times where it was that Joseph got off to during the day, even though Joseph didn’t especially think that there was any cause for concern.

“Are you afraid?” Lily asked, a laugh playing in her voice. “Worried you’ll be robbed?”

Joseph shifted, suddenly more self-conscious than he’d been in days. He wore mostly his own clothes, not wanting to draw too much attention to himself, but he felt like something had changed. Like the girls, and everyone else, could tell that he was being looked after now, and not just because he’d been bringing money with him to give to his friends when he thought that he could get away with it.

“It’s not that,” Joseph said, and it wasn’t. “I don’t want anyone asking questions.”

“How long do you think you’ll be staying with this guy?”

It was impossible to make that guess. He didn’t want to look at Lily, see how light her eyes were or how strong she looked. Looking more like herself, he thought, than when she was Leon. Less like someone who could get hurt—maybe because her makeup was covering all her bruises, or because her dress made her look taller and less like a child. Joseph didn’t know, but he felt to be near her.

“Or are you leaving us?”

“I’m not leaving,” he said, quickly. “I don’t know how long I’ll be staying.”

“Until your friend gets sick of you,” Lily answered, firmly. “They always do. They’re like charity workers. And you know what they’re like.”

“They just want to help, but only until they decide to help themselves,” Joseph said, giving Lily a small grin.

“Exactly,” she said. “So don’t hang about. It’ll just be harder later.”

She wasn’t watching him unkindly. He felt this sudden rush of affection towards her, a warmth that blinded him with the sudden intensity of it. But it felt heavy. Without him having to say it, Lily seemed to understand completely what it was that had Joseph so worried.

He’d even been stunned to find that Mr Moore wanted something good for him—he’d said as much when he’d given Joseph that money; and when he rolled Joseph over and held him tightly against him, warmly, and carried him to the hospital, it had been more than he could have ever been expected to do. Mr Moore didn’t have to feel like that. He had no obligation to Joseph, no mutual benefit. And Joseph wasn’t ungrateful for what John had done for him, and he didn’t disbelieve him—but now that he was living in John’s house, under his roof, and being looked after like that, it was hard not to be wary. Did John still feel that way, or did he feel like he’d done his part now that Joseph was off the street? How long would it take before the pity dried up, and John started to expect something from him? Even the other girls expected things from him—it was mutual what they did for each other. There was no such things as favours. That didn’t bother Joseph; he knew where he stood with them, and it didn’t feel like he was always lying about something when he accepted what help they’d given him.

“Listen,” Joseph said, suddenly, reaching out and taking Lily’s hand. She paused, before wrapping her spindly fingers around Joseph’s. They looked at each other. He wanted to hold her. “Keep my things for me, right?”

“Oh, yeah,” Lily said. “We’ve got your things locked up and out of the way. Not touching them at all, right?”

“Good,” Joseph said. “It would be easier than if I tried to bring them back, I think.”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t want them to touch Bernadette,” he said. “She doesn’t have a place over there, right?”

“Right,” Lily agreed. “Don’t worry. She’ll be here when you come back for her.”

Joseph nodded, and smiled, and it was genuine. With Lily’s hand in his, and the promise of something familiar to come back to, he felt less wary to part and to begin the long walk back to Mr Moore’s house, where he’d have enough time to start worrying about going back, and if John would be there, and if he’d ask anything. He’d have time to remember that he didn’t know what to say, or how to act; he didn’t know what it was that Mr Moore wanted from him, or what he was expecting, or how to play that part. And that unsettled him, left him feeling like some lost child. He knew that he’d never work it out.

 

“Do you have any family?” John asked, some time after his grandmother had gone to bed, when it was just the two of them sitting downstairs, the sun setting, a single lamp on in the room to accompany the light that came through the windows outside.

“I don’t think so,” Joseph said. He doubted that anyone’s opinion of him had changed over the years. If anyone had changed, it was him; all that was before Bernadette, and if that was what they’d thought of him then then he couldn’t imagine what they’d think of him now. Even if he didn’t tell them, they’d see it on him, and he didn’t even have the decency to be ashamed of it. Not of being Bernadette, anyway; she was formidable on the street, not ashamed of what had been done to her—only Joseph felt that way. But at least he could keep quiet about those things; no one had to know.

“I see,” John said. “It isn’t important.”

He was looking at Joseph, but he wouldn’t see anything. Did he think he was the first person that had asked after Joseph’s family, why he was here and not with them?

The thought crossed his mind quickly, and was followed by a shot of loathing, like a bullet following it and stopping it dead. How could he put John in that same category of man, after everything? He was only asking a question, but now Joseph didn’t want to look too closely at John. Like he might know what he’d been thinking, or take offense to it.

“Joseph?” John asked.

“Why’d you ask?” Joseph asked.

“I just wanted to know,” John said. “If there’s someone that you want to see, perhaps…”

Joseph shook his head. “There isn’t anyone.”

“I see.”

“Do you want me to tell you?”

“Tell me what?” John asked, and Joseph hesitated. He wasn’t going to give a name, mention who was still out there. And he didn’t know if that was what he was talking about when he asked the question, or if he was just responding to a question that had been put to him before, by people who wanted to know what a girl like him was doing in a brothel, or on the street, like an excuse. How he ended up there?

Or if he was looking for someplace else to put Joseph—how would he know what John wanted?

“Nothing,” Joseph said. “I don’t have any family.”

 

John was familiar with the ways that people pulled away when something was troubling them, its absence turning to an outline or a silhouette that John had grown to recognise.

It didn’t stop at a tiredness sticking to Joseph that even a good night’s sleep was unlikely to resolve. There were times when Joseph looked like he might be dreaming awake, looking to John without seeing him and answering all questions put to him slowly, like they were speaking past each other, and Joseph’s responses were stifled, like they either weren’t the answer that Joseph intended to give, or their significance depended on some extra knowledge that John failed to verify.

John had known that something was amiss even as he stepped through the door, but it was only when he turned the light on and saw Joseph standing crouched next to his desk that a sickening dread came over him. Joseph looked ready to run at a moment’s notice. His expression was withdrawn, his focus entirely on John.

“Joseph,” John said, remembering how stunned he’d looked when he’d caught him in his grandmother’s room. “Joseph,” he repeated. “What are you doing here?”

“I was waiting for you,” Joseph said.

“Why in here?” John asked, but maybe that was the wrong question. “Why like this?”

“Do you want me to go?” Joseph asked, and John didn’t think it was a question about being in the room, although it might have been. “Do you want me to go, or do you want something from me?”

“You should be asleep,” John said. “If you can’t sleep, then should at least not be in here.”

Joseph gave no response to this answer, only continuing to stand there. He no longer looked like a cornered animal, waiting for the first opportunity to bolt, but he didn’t look calm, either. He wasn’t looking at John.

“What do you want me to do?” Joseph asked. “I don’t know, anymore.”

“I don’t want you to do anything,” John said, drawing himself closer into the room and closing the door behind me. “You’re here as my guest—”

“For how long?”

“Forever, if you want. This isn’t a contract with conditions, Joseph.”

“You said,” Joseph said, slowly, “that you brought me back with you because you wanted to.”

“That’s right.” It felt like he was getting somewhere, and he was touched, oddly, that Joseph remembered that particular detail.

“Why?”

“Because,” John said, unsure where to start; which answer was more the truth and which answers justified that reason? “I don’t want you to live on the streets. I told you.”

“You gave me money.”

“I don’t think that was enough.”

“What about the other girls?” he asked. “Do you think that they should live on the streets?”

“No,” John said. And he didn’t think it was right. But there was still a difference between bringing in everyone who needed it, and bringing back Joseph. At times like this he found that he greatly admired Laszlo for belonging to the first type of people, an open door to anyone, but what he wanted for Joseph wasn’t a charity. It was personal, for the same reason that once he lost any sympathy he might have had for Beecham when it was Joseph at his mercy.

“No, Joseph,” John said, “I don’t think that they should be living on the street. I don’t think that that’s right for anybody, especially not children.”

“You think that I don’t deserve it,” Joseph said, “because of what happened.”

“It isn’t that.”

“Mr Moore?”

“John,” he said, without thinking. “Just call me John, if you want to.”

“All right,” Joseph said. “John. Do you still think of me as Bernadette?”

“I—do I— _no_ ,” he said. “She isn’t you— _she isn’t real_. I never saw you like that.”

“Even when you didn’t know me,” Joseph said.

“I thought you were a boy on the roof,” John said, “and still alive; that was important, at that point. I thought you might know what was happening. I never thought about what you did as Bernadette.”

When he said that Joseph flinched, and John stood back. He really looked at Joseph, looked for something to say but found nothing. He could have asked what was wrong; looking back, he’d later think that he could have done a lot of things. In this case, though, he didn’t consider it; he thought that he knew. It had seemed obvious.

“Do you want to know?”

“No. It’s late. You should try to sleep. Or you can stay here. We can go downstairs, if you want the company.”

“It’s late. You’re tired,” Joseph said. “I didn’t mean to bother you, Mr Moore.”

“John.”

“John,” Joseph repeated. “I didn’t mean to bother you.”

 

Joseph went back to his room, and he waited. He waited for his skin to stop crawling, for the sounds of John walking around in his bedroom to cease, for his heart to ease and his breathing to come more easily. He waited until the air didn’t feel so heavy, until the touch of the blankets on him didn’t distract him, until he didn’t feel like he was so close to crying—like it was an inevitability that he couldn’t escape, and that he could only hold off for so long. And he waited until he could stop thinking about this.

Before he could have hidden in the day, found someplace to slept or gone somewhere that he wouldn’t be noticed. It turned out that there were advantages to being a child whore, like that most people didn’t want to look at him.

But even with a room to himself, he was under scrutiny; here, he had to lock himself away into some small space at all time, or risk being exposed. John was thinking about him. Considering him. It wasn’t enough that they be casual acquaintances; it wasn’t enough that John had helped him. John was still thinking about him, and looking at him for something—and one day he’d see something he didn’t like, he’d look too closely and see that there was no divisive difference between Joseph and Bernadette, that they were one in the same except that Bernadette was made to withstand more than Joseph was capable of and. And Bernadette could put up with that, and more, whereas Joseph froze, and whimpered, and struggled against rope holding his wrists even though it only hurt himself, but didn’t struggle hard enough to get away, and was too afraid even to beg, and later he was too afraid to even remember what happened. Joseph had been warned that this could have happened to him and still wasn’t able to stop it. He’d rather through himself in with Bernadette than risk the alternative.

 

It really didn’t feel like a choice that night: waiting for John to stop moving, for the house to fall still around him, and for him to slip away.

 

* * *

John knew what to expect at this time, but also couldn’t stop himself from lingering over every person he passed—every girl hanging by the sides of the streets looking at him curiously, and every man that he passed who could follow one of them back to the room and eat them. He kept thinking about how Joseph flinched away from him, like he’d been hit. There was a point where John would have done anything to bring Joseph in from the streets.

Strangely, there was one thought that remained at the forefront of his mind, keeping him focus. It was a memory of Sara, and a conversation that they’d had not long ago when the subject of Joseph came up, and the question of what it was that John could, or should, do for him now. But from that conversation John remembered one really specific detail. What Joseph was after was the familiar. Sometimes, safety didn’t feel safe. Not if it was new; not if Joseph wasn’t accustomed to it. The body adapted, and sometimes the body would find it easier to sleep on the streets with a constant threat looming overhead than in a room with four walls and a roof. It was all relative.

So he knew where to find Joseph. He knew where to look. And he wasn’t sure whether it was luck or if his sheer need to believe that he could do something was finally being rewarded, but on the street where he’d normally expected to see Joseph he saw him—saw Bernadette.

John braced himself, waited to see if anyone else had noticed him there. Bernadette’s hair fell around her face, and she kept pushing it away.

He remembered Bernadette with a grotesque vividness that alarmed him, older than the boy dressing up as her, with limbs that were too long and a face that looked creased over. Like something had taken over her, left her deformed and twisted, not right anymore. Now, John saw none of that. She looked like a child—a scared child, who didn’t know what she wanted—but not in the same way that Joseph looked small, like he would have been willing to do anything in his power to extract himself from the situation and to disappear.

She looked like she was in trouble, looking around herself for a way out.

John crossed the street and walked up to her, grabbing her arm. Bernadette jumped, whirling around to meet his eyes and then freezing. She jerked her arm out of his hand, at the same time as he said, “Joseph.”

He let go of her, taking a step back like he had the night before, but he didn’t step back further than that. This wasn’t the night before, and whatever it was that he’d said that had caused Joseph flinch had already been said.

“How did you find me?”

“I thought you would be here,” John said. “This isn’t a new place.

Bernadette shook her head. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“Neither should you.”

“No,” he said. “No, you don’t understand.” There were people around them; people watching. A girl who had started to walk down the street had paused, and was looking over to them, and John thought for a moment that she might come over to ask what the trouble was. But there was a man to her left, a man who touched her elbow and led her away, and John remembered what Joseph had said to him once, about why it was better to be working in a brothel than on the streets. What did John know about any of this?

“Okay,” John said, slowly, but just the sound of his voice was enough to make Joseph tense. “Why don’t you tell me.”

Joseph didn’t say anything else, just gave John a weak smile, one that twisted across Joseph’s face like a starving, feral cat, before turning to run. But Joseph wasn’t the only one who could run—John took off after him, his feet pounding the pavement as she slipped between buildings.

He could have grabbed her. Perhaps it was intuitive, but it didn’t feel like a good idea to reach out for him like that right now.

“Joseph,” he said, slowing down, stopping. “Joseph—would you listen to me?”

It surprised him to see that Joseph did stop, and did turn around to look at him.

“Do you hate this?”

“I don’t hate you,” John was saying. He thought about taking a step closer, but didn’t want Joseph to run again. “Why don’t we go back home? I thought you’d come back on your own time. I’d leave it in your hands—tell you that you could, if you wanted to, and leave it in your hands. The problem is that I don’t think that you would come back, even if I made it clear that I wanted you back.

“So now I’m going to ask you something,” John said, venturing bravely forward. And equally bravely—and actually, John thought, even more daringly—Joseph stood his ground, waited until John was only a foot or two away before crossing his arms over his chest, waiting for this question, Bernadette’s face set like this was something that John was going to inflict.

“What did I do last night?” John said. “What did I do that made you think… this?”

“Nothing,” Joseph said. “But I don’t think you—”

“Stop guessing what I think and tell me what I said,” John said, remembering how Joseph flinched, trying to soften his voice.

“Do you wish that I wasn’t Bernadette?”

“You aren’t.”

“I was,” Joseph said. “Who do you think she was?”

“It was just something that you did—you had to,” John said. “It was circumstances. I don’t think you did anything wrong—you were trying to live.”

“I didn’t stop being Bernadette,” Joseph said. “And if you want me to say that that wasn’t me, then I can’t do that. I didn’t stop being her just because I live with you now.”

There were a lot of ways that Joseph might have been able to explain this better, and a lot more that John could have done to understand where he was coming from. He imagined that there was very little about Joseph’s life that was pleasant, and he knew what he did to protect that life was equally terrible. But right there, that night, John was only relived to see him—and relieved that Joseph was speaking to him at all. It was proof of some desperate effort that they might understand one another, no matter how twisted and stunted the words; no matter how shaky and nervous the person speaking them.

So when Joseph said, “If you hate me for that, I get it,” the only thing that John could think of to say was, “I don’t hate you.”

Joseph looked sceptical.

“There’s a lot that I don’t know about you… but I do know some things. I don’t think that you’ll surprise me. And even if you do, there’s nothing that could have happened to you that would make me hate you.”

“What about things I did?”

“Nothing,” John repeated, with a surprising force; almost as much as it surprised him that he realised that he meant it. There was nothing that Joseph would do that would make John change his mind about him. “We shouldn’t stay here right now, Joseph. It’s late—I want you to come back with me.”

“Even with,” and he gestured to himself; John suspected that he wasn’t entirely referring to the dress that he was wearing, or to Bernadette.

“Yes.”

* * *

The next morning John thought that he’d bring up Joseph’s unexpected disappearance, but he didn’t, figuring that it was best left to Joseph for the time being. There would be a time to bring up the events from the night before, but he’d been surprised at how helpless he felt standing there; and at how familiar Joseph looked, the extent that John wanted to take him and shelter him, because he felt he knew everything that he needed to about Joseph—but also because he found that he knew nothing, but that he really wanted to.

So he thought that he wouldn’t bring that up the next morning, unless Joseph looked like he might want to. A few more days passed, though, and they found themselves alone in the house, and John couldn’t stop himself.

“Why did you run when you saw me?”

Joseph didn’t say anything at first; John considered pressing the subject, almost didn’t, but before he had to make that decision, Joseph answered: “I didn’t know why you were there, or what you were going to do.”

“Did you think that I would hurt you?”

“No,” Joseph said. “I told you. I don’t think you could hurt anyone.”

“So what were you thinking?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t,” Joseph said, and the conversation felt like they were talking about a third person, who wasn’t in the room. “All I was thinking was that I needed to get away from you.”

“Were you going anywhere?”

Joseph shook his head. The one thing that John could say for all of that was that in the end, Joseph had stopped running. He’d stopped running and turned around and faced John, and then he’d let John convince him to come back. John would have said or done or agreed to anything if it meant that he could get Joseph away from there, and bring him back to safety, but as it turned out he didn’t have to. He said just enough.

“I meant it, though,” John said. “There isn’t anything that you can tell me that will make me change my mind about you.”

“What about Bernadette?” Joseph finally asked, after a pause long enough that John had fallen under the impression that this conversation was over, and that there wasn’t anything else that would be said tonight. He would have been all right to leave it at that.

“What about that?” John asked. “If you say that you can’t draw a line between yourself and Bernadette, then I believe you. Why wouldn’t I? You spent so many years…” His voice almost faltered; he wasn’t sure where he wanted to finish that sentence, but he picked up with, “Living on the streets, and being her. That’s not something I understand. I can’t judge you for it.”

“Yes, you can.”

“Whatever I thought, I’d probably be wrong.”

 

The things that happen in a linear pattern are few and far between, and everything else is as impossible to separate as it was to separate Joseph from Bernadette, and the other way around. John discovered this at the same time as he confirmed that he hadn’t been wrong when he’d said to Laszlo, all those months ago, that he was going to have many sleepless nights because of him.

Sometimes he thought that he was really out to sabotage himself with his nightmares, because it wasn’t enough to anticipate and repeat the sights of dead children with their missing eyes and broken bodies, falling in place, but to forget that they were dead, to make himself search for them and then find them. They’d always be dead. Sometimes they’d be Joseph.

And he dreamt of finding Joseph again, like he had, and pulling him up and holding him. Just long enough for a surge of relief to run through him—unlike what he’d actually felt, which had been a nothingness that lived just past relief, a gratitude that exceeded what an exhausted man was capable of—and then the surge of relief would fade, and he’d pull Joseph back to look at him. And Joseph would be staring up at him with a blank expression, and gaping holes in his eyes, but even then John wasn’t able to drop him.

That detail comforted him.

 

The issue of what to do with Joseph rubbed John the wrong way, although he couldn’t articulate precisely why. Was it because Joseph wasn’t something to be dealt with? It had been John who brought him back, carried him away from the reservoir and sat by his bed in the hospital until he woke, telling them that this was his on. (The only thing that John would say that he was grateful to Japheth for was the inspiration—he wouldn’t have thought that it was so easy to just lie about who Joseph was, if he hadn’t seen how easy it had been for Japheth Dury to become John Beecham.)

Another concern that John had was what about Joseph wanted. There had been a time when he’d thought that it was easy. Laszlo had put it best: that a child is looking for a sense of safety. Once that had seemed obvious, because there it went without saying that Joseph would be safer here than on the street—but was that enough? Looking at Joseph he felt that he was missing something, and again he was overcome by the sense that Joseph seemed smaller than he’d looked when they first met.

Once, John had remarked to himself that Joseph had grown up too quickly. When he thought back to his own childhood he was mortified. When he thought about his own behaviour as an adult, that touch of shame was like a slap. How careless he was, how little he’d ever had to consider in the way of his own safety.

When John put the suggestion forward that Joseph would be tutored for the time being, until he reached a level of proficiency so as to allow him to go to school, he wasn’t particularly surprised by the muted reaction.

“And then I’ll go to the schools that you went to,” Joseph said, but said like he didn’t believe it.

“Possibly,” John said. “If you work hard, and—would you like that? To go to the same schools as me?”

Joseph smiled, but it was a nervous smile. “Can you imagine, me?”

“As a matter of fact, I can,” John said, but Joseph looked at him dubiously. “It isn’t impossible. You’re smart. I see no reason that you couldn’t… but that’s in the future.”

“You really think that,” Joseph said, and John wondered whether he meant to say that, or if he heard the heaviness in it only after he’d spoke. He shrugged.

“Yes,” John said. “I do.”

It was impossible to tell what he was thinking, and he continued with the lingering thought that had been bothering him for some time now, that he didn’t know where to go with this. In an ideal world it wouldn’t be falling to him to decide what he needed to do in order to do right by Joseph; someone would have intervened a long time before he’d stepped in, and Joseph would have never found himself in need of John’s protection. But John was there instead.


End file.
